The pilots responsible for Northwest Flight 188’s infamous 150-mile-mishap say they were distracted by shop talk — not an ill-timed nap, according to federal investigators.

The two pilots who last week mistakenly flew the A320 with 144 passengers and three flight attendants on board past the Twin Cities have told investigators they were busy discussing a new work scheduling system.

Both pilots pulled out their personal laptops in violation of company policy during the discussion, according to a summary released Monday of weekend interviews the pilots had with the National Transportation Safety Board.

When air traffic controllers finally got in touch with Flight 188 after almost 80 minutes of no radio contact, the pilots said it was “just cockpit distraction” and “dealing with company issues,” the NTSB summary says.

With their laptops in use, “the first officer, who was more familiar with the procedure, was providing instruction to the captain,” the NTSB report says.

In a statement Monday, Northwest’s parent company, Delta Air Lines, said personal laptop use during flights is prohibited by the airline and “violations of that policy will result in termination.” The two pilots have been suspended pending the investigation’s results.

“Neither pilot was aware of the airplane’s position until a flight attendant called about five minutes before they were scheduled to land,” the NTSB report says. At that point, Capt. Timothy Cheney, 53, “looked at his primary flight display for an (estimated time of arrival) and realized that they had passed” Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

The NTSB summary of the more than five hours of combined interviews of the pilots reveal that Cheney and First Officer Richard Cole, 54, are sticking to their story that they were distracted during the flight. Safety experts had speculated that the two must have fallen asleep.

Air traffic controllers Wednesday tried to reach the plane 13 times using various methods but failed. The NTSB summary notes that the pilots said they didn’t monitor calls from controllers “even though both stated they heard conversation on the radio.”

The pilots told investigators they were using cockpit speakers to listen to radio communications, not their headsets. But they still should have been able to hear the repeated calls from the ground, said Al Yurman, a retired NTSB investigator.

Most crews, if they haven’t heard from an air traffic controller for a while, will call in to ask when they’re scheduled to start the landing procedure, he said.

The laptop computer explanation “sounds fishy at best, but it could be true,” Yurman said. “Whatever else comes out of it, they violated federal air regulations, they violated company regulations,” he said, adding that their pilot’s licenses likely will be suspended. “I don’t think it’s going to get any better for them.”

Delta acquired Northwest in April 2008, and the consolidation of the airlines’ operations is ongoing. Northwest pilots are switching over to Delta’s computer bidding and scheduling system. Crews flying Northwest’s Airbus aircraft recently made the switch, said a Northwest pilot who didn’t want to be named.

The new system “can turn your life upside down for a couple of months,” the pilot said. “If you don’t pick up the new system in short order, you could mess up your family life for a bit until you figure that out and can take advantage of your seniority.”

On Northwest planes, the A320 pilots would not have had access to a Wi-Fi hookup, so they couldn’t have been accessing the Delta system and putting in bids for flights, the pilot said.

The Delta computer system has a different syntax compared with Northwest’s, as pilots try to request days off and make other scheduling decisions. Also, the way that numerous technical cockpit procedures are handled is changing as the integration with Delta continues. Some of the Northwest pilots “are probably feeling like they’re drinking from a fire hose,” the pilot said.

Asked if Delta has provided training on the new computer scheduling system, the pilot said Delta has periodically put some employees in crew rooms at airports to answer questions from pilots.

The NTSB’s interview notes reveal that Cheney was hired in 1985 and has 20,000 hours of flight time, about 10,000 of those in an Airbus A320. Cole, the first officer, was hired in 1997; he has 11,000 hours total and about 5,000 in the A320.

Both said they had never had an accident or violation. They also said they weren’t fatigued during the flight, having just completed a 19-hour layover before departing San Diego for the Twin Cities.

The weekend interviews also revealed that the cockpit voice recorder won’t be of much help in the NTSB’s investigation. The recording system was on a half-hour loop, constantly recording over itself. The system continued running while the plane was at the gate at Minneapolis-St. Paul, where it arrived just after 9 p.m.

The A320’s flight data recorder did capture several hundred “aircraft parameters,” such as altitude, airspeed and direction. That recorder is being reviewed by the NTSB “to see if any information regarding crew activity during the portion of the flight where radio contact was lost can be obtained,” the NTSB’s summary says.

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